The Top 4 SUVs for Growing Families

Let’s face it. Here in America, a car is not a luxury, it’s a basic necessity. With our wide-reaching cities and the harried schedule of our modern lives, the comfort, flexibility and privacy offered by the modern automobile is both an essential part of life, and a little slice of heavenly peace to brighten each day.

As a teenager, you fell in love with your first taste of four-wheeled freedom. As you moved through college and adulthood, you surely upgraded to models a little more befitting of your status. So now here you are in your late 20s, with a blossoming career and car to go with it. Whether it’s an Audi or BMW, Lexus or Infiniti, your ride tells the world who you are: your taste, your status, and your individuality.

Until that magic moment when all of this flies out the window: you have a baby on the way!

Suddenly, there’s more to be concerned about that simply style and performance. You’ll need to accommodate car seats, soccer balls, and strollers. You’ll need to load shopping bags from the mall into the back with a wriggling child or two in each arm. Family life means driving on snow and dirt, and hauling your trailers and toys. And above all, you’ll need the safest vehicle to protect your new precious cargo. This means 4-wheel-drive and superior crash protection.

In short, if the diagnosis is pregnancy, the prescription is SUV.

Luckily we’re on the job for you here at Mr. Money Mustache. I collected the best SUVs on the American market and compared them side-by-side to pick a winner.

2014 Toyota Sequoia Platinum

With seating for 8, the $60,795 Sequoia does it all. Featuring a fully boxed load frame, a responsive 381 horsepower 5.7L V-8 engine, and a 5750lb curb weight, this family hauler is nimble, capable, and luxurious. With fuel economy of 13MPG around town and as high as 18MPG on the highway, it can help your family’s dollar stretch just a bit further, and who doesn’t need that these days?

2014 Ford Expedition Limited EL

Sure, it’s big, and it’s fast, with specs rivaling the Sequoia at the budget friendly price of $51,695. But what really sets the Expedition apart is the perforated heated and cooled front leather seats! What could be a better respite from a pounding day of errands than a cushion of climate-controlled air that soothes you back to sanity? Fuel efficiency is just as good at 13/18 for the 4WD model. Also sold as the Lincoln Navigator, with an even more distinctive selection of luxury appointments.

2014 Chevrolet Suburban LTZ

It’s everything you’ve come to expect from a large SUV and so much more. High intensity headlamps and foglamps, Front Park Assist, 12-way seats, Side Blind Zone Alert with Lane Change Assist, all powered by an EcoTec 5.3L V-8 with the ability to tow 8,000 pounds. Eco-Tec means you’re actually helping the environment as you cruise your way through each 33.5 gallon (126 litre) tank of fuel! But if all that tech-talk makes your eyes glaze over, let’s just put it this way: A very sweet ride that will be the envy of your block, with 16 cupholders for only $62,595! Also sold as the Cadillac Escalade with a more prestigious front grille for only a few thousand more.

2014 BMW X5 50i

For those with smaller families and a higher demand for performance, the venerable X5 may fit the bill. Featuring a 4.4 liter twin turbo V-8 that pours 450 horsepower into this SUV’s lightweight 4950 pound figure, the X5 will scream from 0-60 in about five seconds, smoking all four of its 19″ performance tires in the process. But with heated leather seating for 7 and available personal video screens for each passenger, your lucky children might not even notice what you’re up to.

Starting at under $70,000 with the Mocha Interior Design Package and the Executive Package, the X5 gets my personal vote for the best vehicle to prepare for baby. If cash is a little tight, BMW’s financing and lease packages can have one of these safe and roomy vehicles in your driveway for as little as $789 per month.

Although having your first baby is a challenging experience that will require many costly purchases, I hope I’ve at least helped with the most critical decision of all: what to drive.*

*Oh, and happy April Fool’s Day. The best family vehicle is a pair of bikes for the parents, each pulling a bike trailer. Second choice is a good small car (you can get kid seats that fit 3-across even in compact cars). And if you REALLY need something to carry a lot of people, get yourself a 2007 Mazda5 with a 4-cylinder engine and a 5-speed manual transmission. It comfortably carries 6 adults (tested it myself), burns a reasonable amount of gas, and is not a gigantic Douchewagon that will get you punched in the face by passing Mustachians. Just don’t buy one and then use the damned thing for single-person commuting!

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Ha. You just made me nearly spit my lunch out all over my monitor. I was skimming the article, wondering if I needed to contact you to tell you your website had been hacked or if you’d already noticed. A real-life LOL moment. :) Thanks for that.

LoL! I read the title…shook my head….and then remembered the date. Phew!

Though, he neglected to mention the most important purchase with an impending child:

A BIGGER HOUSE!

3 beds / 2 bath is just WAYY too small. Nope, need a 3-car-garage, 5 bed / 3 bath with a den McMansion, preferably in an HOA. New “kid safe” furniture, extra storage for all the “learning toys”, and all the extra options and trims because those will help ease the stress of having a child. Lawn and maid service are mandatory, because HOLY CRAP you’ll be tired. And might as well have a live-in nanny, too.

Two new SUV’s in the driveway JUST IN CASE one or the other parent has to take the kid somewhere, and make sure the DVD package is installed or OMG! it might be a nightmare-ish drive to the grocery store and back!

I didn’t know the date on this one until I saw the footnote. I read the title, saw “SUV” and thought, “satire.”
Then, reading the article, I thought “huh, he usually doesn’t run wuss quotes this long… Where’s the arguments?” before finally finding the footnote.

I know… there are so many new luxury features coming out in the 2015 model years, you might as well wait or at least start planning to trade up later this year! Plus that gives you more time to apply for the credit you’ll need so you can borrow money to make your monthly loan payments! (of course if that fails there is always a friendly payday loan waiting to lend you a helping hand) Is this some kind of joke, suggesting that we buy one of these vehicles that’s already outdated? And publishing the prices so all our friends and relatives will know that we spent less than a hundred grand on a sweet new ride without even making them get out a calculator to figure out what the monthly payments they’re making add up to? Hopefully he comes to his senses tomorrow. If not we’ll have to hack the website to get a truly sensible message out there.

We have a family of six, so we do own a minivan. But I don’t drive it a lot, and it gets way, way, way better gas mileage than an SUV. It also cost a heck of a lot less upfront (and we paid cash for it.)

Make it three on the sticker shock. If you’d asked me what a new SUV costs, I would’ve guessed $30k for a mid-range option. That they’re actually 2x as much is just stunning. I guess it’s an indicator of the fact that I haven’t bought a vehicle in 4 years…

Wow my 4×4 Suburban only cost me $5,000 and had 26,000 miles on it. It had been in a wreck and sat in a barn for 10 years, but it was repaired so you couldn’t even tell. We use it to deliver stuff from our farm to customers (1200-1500 pounds of beef and pork is a lot to pull with a bike for 50 miles to town) so it is even a tax write off.

Thank goodness, finally MMM has come to his senses and realised that there is more to life than saving money and being efficient – that the luxury that comes from burning gas and hauling steel is just as important!

Haha, thanks for the laugh! I could tell it was an April Fool’s joke as soon as I read the post title. Luxury tanks with butt warmers and 16 cup holders…and what the hell is Front Park Assist?! *shaking my head*

If I may, I would like to add to your note that public transportation is an awesome option too where it’s available. No stress for parents as others do the driving, and what kid doesn’t love buses and trains?

Front Park Assist is that thing that goes beep … beep … beep beep … beeeeeeeeeeep when you get close to a wall, because your vehicle is too gargantuan to be able to park it in a normal space using your eyes.

I know trailers are cheap, but long bikes are worth the price (especially if they’re replacing a car). It’s so nice to have my kid up front in a bakfiet/longjohn-style bike (bullitt, cetma, metrofiets), where we can have a conversation. Even longtail bikes (xtracycle, yuba) are a huge improvement, at least for kid hauling.

Just make sure you have good bike brakes. Bought one of those discount store mtn bikes one time. Thought I was getting something good b/c I paid a little more than average for it. Suspension, cool paint job, etc. Used it to pull my eldest around the neighborhood in a bike trailer for exercise and giggles. Came down a big hill once and could not stop the rig. Stretched all the brake cables, gave myself nightmares, etc. ;)

I’ve ridden thousands of miles on bicycles – ridden up and down mtns, off-road, had a bike up to 50-55 mph, etc.

Never again did I tow the bike trailer with that junky bike. A year or so passed and the bike was falling apart. Creaked, wheels were warping, rubber was rotting, rust everywhere, etc. That bike’s toughest moments was riding around in my yard with the kids. Finally I scrapped it. Flipped it over loading it onto my trailer to run it the recycle center and on the bottom of the crankhousing was a sticker that said “no for trick or off-road use”. On a MTN bike. With suspension. My odometer read 65 miles and the bike was usable junk.

Went back for a proper bike from a proper bike store and hundreds of tough miles later my bike is still super. I test rode it and the brakes were immediately SO good that I was sold.

Well, to be fair I picked the highest trim line for each of these vehicles, which adds $20k over the base model.

You can’t blame the automakers for the strategy: since the target market is 100% clueless consumers, it is pretty easy to milk more money from people by adding more doodads and putting them into more exclusive packages. And the basic platform of most of these SUVs (save the X5, which actually contains some engineering) is just a pickup truck. The Sequoia is just a Toyota Tundra with seats in the back. The Expedition is the F-150 with lipstick, and Lincoln Navigator adds eyeliner. The Tahoe, Suburban, Yukon, and Escalade are just the GMC Sierra/Chevy Silverado truck with some fancy add-ons.

The ultimate strategy if you actually need a truck is just a 2002 Ford Ranger 2WD manual 4-cylinder longbed. Add an full body cargo rack and you can outperform any vehicle here in the only way that is worth measuring: CARRYING LARGE THINGS.

Umm, I NEVER see any 80s Toyota pickups around here. They all rusted away a long time ago. I do see tons of Rangers every day though. And a Ranger will haul just as much or more than the Toyota. I’ve hauled over 1300 lbs in mine several times. Aside from braking distance being slightly longer, I couldn’t even tell the weight was there.

I remember driving (someone else’s) Suburban and Expedition, and even a few years back, amount of gas and money those trucks were using (25km/100 or 9miles/gallon) was almost comical (or tragicomical).

Titanic was probably using the same amount of energy to move passengers. And, they will probably end up having the same destiny as well.

When I found out my wife was pregnant with our first child, selling the 3 bedroom 3 bath townhouse for the 4K sq. ft. mansion was the easy part (the thought of my child growing up in a house with only 3 toilets to poop in and neighbors right next door just didn’t sit well with me). Finding the right car to drive was not so easy — until now. Thanks MMM!

Got me! But what about Kenworth and Peterbilts? They even can haul shitloads from the mall, and can accomodate naps between stores. I understand they have got better on mileage also and less smog than years ago. go big or go home, right?

HAHAHAH had me going there for a second! Luckily we have survived just fine with our only child with my 94 Acura Integra 2-door and my wife’s 96 Corolla. 340K and 260K miles respectively. I do wish for a 4-door car again (first car was a hand-me-down 89 Camry 5-speed).

Perfect. This reminds me of an amazing thing I saw last night, a luxury SUV driving down the road with its tailgate open and a large box strapped into the back. Inside the box: a motorized jumbo kiddie version of a luxury (Mercedes) SUV. Some parents actually WANT to imprint the “clown car” lifestyle on their kids. Poor kids,they’d be better off getting a bit of exercise on a beat up old bike purchased for a few bucks on Craigslist.

Wow, what a classic thing to see – I wish you could have captured a picture of it for us!

It’s especially ironic when people have these trucks, and they still don’t even have room to fit stuff into them, which is the original purpose of having a truck instead of a car: carrying large stuff.

The 4-door full-size pickups with luxury interiors and short cargo beds are another hilarious invention, like neutering an elephant and giving it high-heel shoes. People struggle to strap down a few sticks of lumber to a 300HP behemoth, while my 40-pound cargo bike trailer has an 8-foot flat cargo bed and can carry longer stuff using only leg power!

That’s hilarious! I was talking to my neighbor about needing to figure out a way to get 2 pieces of 2x4x10 for my garden project and he offered me to borrow his pickup truck. He bought a 2014 extended cab Ram 1500, which is now at the shop yet another time for disappearing engine oil, so they gave him a loaner which is the same exact model. Anyway, it only has a 6 foot bed so the lumber will still stick out a lot. It’s a very nice offer, for sure, but these trucks are useless for an average homeowner. By the way, the solution to the lemon truck? “Gonna TRADE IT IN on a 2014 Tundra…” ‘MERICA!

Another option is to get a length of rope, and tie the pair of 2x4s to the top tube of your bicycle. Another option if you’re not comfortable with that much extra length swing around from the front and back of your bike (and 10′ pushes my limits) is to tie one end to a dolly, and the other end to your bike (a rear rack works really well for this, and I’ve frequently moved 15 piece bundles of 10’x1″ EMT conduit this way).

When our son was born I sold my (old) BMW 330i and bought a used Mini Cooper hatch. Most people thought I was crazy, including my wife. A year and a half later I can tell you that the Cooper works just fine with rear-facing and front-facing child seats. It’s a blast to drive and gets 39 mpg in combined city/highway driving, which helps a lot on my daily commute. I posted a couple of entries on my blog about living with a Mini Cooper and a kid and those entries get decent traffic, so I’m not the only one doing this. At daycare though, most people pull up in one of the monster trucks on this list or something similar, drop of their one child and then climb into their tank to drive 20 miles downtown by themselves. If we have a second child I’m trying to convince my wife to get a used Mazda5 mini-mini van. She thinks it’s hideous so we’ll probably end up with one of the 4 cylinder wagons which is also a good compromise for a growing family.

We have 2 kids and a Mini Cooper Clubman – they fit fine. We had the car before the kids so I’m not sure that’s the conscious choice I would have made but no need to get rid of a good car when kids came along.

BTW, count me among those who totally fell for the joke. I was waiting for the face punch and didn’t remember the date. Well played, sir!

I have 2 kids and a mini cooper. When they were rear facing, I just reached in through the back hatch to pull them out. Got some looks from the perfect moms with giant mini vans. Still have the mini cooper 10 years later and my kids still fit in the back.

I’m all for pushing boundaries but our 2 door Mini Cooper hatch won’t work with 2 car seats in the back. I tried putting the car seat behind me and I have to move up the driver seat all the way to the front. At 6′ I barely fit there and since my car has a manual transmission, I can’t work the clutch for anything longer than a quick ride. My son sits on the passenger side now. So no long trips for us in the Mini if we have another kid. No worries though, we have a 4 door sedan and that will work just fine so I can keep my Mini Cooper for commuting.

The 2003 manual MiniCooper still works for our 8yo and 10yo in the back, but agree you’d only be able to get a carseat behind the passenger seat. Sadly, the day is soon coming where I’ll need a larger car – so I found this MMM post to be really helpful!

The title caught my attention, and then the first sentence felt a very unmustachian…but then I was thinking you must be using a sarcastic tone. Finally realized that, yes, today is April Fool’s Day! Oddly, I see many people driving these trucks, but DON’T even have a family to haul. Insanity.

I read MMM and get rich slowly through a RSS feed. When I saw the headline and first sentence or two I was pissed. I thought to myself, “What is this crap that GRS has been putting out lately. Have they lost their mind!” Then I clicked on it and realized I’ve been pranked. Whew, now I don’t have to open a can of whop ass on someone’s bad financial advice.

Granted, I only have 2 small children to cart around, but you never know. Someday the entire Duggar clan might happen to drop by for a visit, and if I don’t have a vehicle that can hold every single one of them, I just don’t know what they would think of me!
It is absolutely insane the size vehicles people drive. I have a friend at work, with 2 young girls. She had one of the smaller SUVs but it wasn’t big enough. So after just a few years of ownership, they traded it in for a Nissan Armada. That thing seriously looks like a tank. Her husband has a truck if they needed to carry anything for projects, and her kids are too young to be carting around sports equipment. I just don’t get it.
I am of the opinion that you should get the least amount of car you can get away with, in the nicest condition you can afford. A Hyundai Elantra fits our needs perfectly, and the amount we save in gas over that co-worker (we both have to drive about 30 miles each way to work — I know, you can kick me out of the club now) is enough to fill a Roth IRA for the year.

Has anyone actually fit 3 across in a scion xa already? We’re only on child two, but it’s clear that a third would require replacing our existing car seats with narrower ones to have any chance. I’ve already worked out the luggage problem for road trips, so having a specific plan for 3 car seats would leave us set unless/until #4.

I tend to agree that getting 3 car seats side-by-side is really tough and depends on the seats. I can guarantee that our our seats can’t go 3 in a row…we have two Britax seats forward facing seats that convert to the booster next to each other in a Kia Sedona and there is no room for a small child between them let alone a 3rd seat.

Try Radions. They’re the narrowest carseat around, and they are good from 5-100 pounds. Britax, Graco, are all about 1.5 times as wide. I knew a family with a Honda fit who had three of them across, which is not a huge car.

It also depends on the age range. Often the oldest can be in a booster seat by the time the third arrives (4 years, 40 pounds, and 4 feet), although that depends a lot on personal development – a lot of kids don’t reach 4 feet or 40 pounds until 5 or 6.

There is a carseat website with all the widths of seats and cars to compare them.

Agreed on the Radions. Also keep in mind that it’s not often that they would all be rear facing at the same time so many of the car seat techs recommend “puzzle piecing”. A quick search on the car-seat.org website came up with this link. It references the scion XB but also the Britax so thought it might work well for you. Otherwise post with your specifics (ages of kids, carseats already owned, etc) and they should be able to help you out.http://www.car-seat.org/showthread.php?t=195635

Awesome article! ;) Here in UT, we have big families and snow. A sad recipe for SUV’s and enormous trucks. I’ve been hauling my family of eight in a minivan with no problem. Now that the older kids are leaving the nest, we do a lot of our driving in our (new to us) Prius with snow tires. It’s really hard not to yell our “Suckers!” as I breeze by in the commuter lane or fill up at the gas station.

My how much we Mustachians have all grown up. I started reading MMM a couple of years ago, and the changes in my life have been spectacular. I am saving so much money right now it makes my head spin. I am just HAPPY because my finances are going in the direction I want them to go, and very fast. MMM probably doesn’t hear it enough, but thank you, Sir, for changing my life and the lives of most of your devoted readers.

And it’s funny – I don’t feel deprived in the slightest. I am used to my frugalness now. And I still play as much golf as I want, work out 5 days a week, and have dinner out 4 days a month with DW for $25 a time. Life is good!

My (unknowingly super Mustachian) sister refers to the most of the other moms she interacts with as “The Escalade Brigade”. While she doesn’t enjoy the sensation of being looked down upon, she happily walks/buses everywhere, and pockets that +$60,000!

Haha, I knew it had to be a joke, but I didn’t realize until the end that it was April Fools! Love it!

Also…

you can get kid seats that fit 3-across even in compact cars

Do you mean like a multi-kid car seat? That was one of my never-realized ‘million-dollar ideas’ that I had when we couldn’t fit three boosters/full seats in the back of our Golf. Does somebody make a multiseat?

Another mom at Daycare has a 1 year old, a 2 1/2 year old, and a 4 year old. They are 3 across the backseat in her Pontiac Grand Prix in a rear facing infant seat behind the driver, a rear facing convertible in the middle, and a high back booster behind the passenger. It looks really tight, but it works for their family. I couldn’t tell you the brands, just tossing it out to point out that kids age and progress though various sized seats.

we had 3-across in our matrix, which is actually fairly easy ’cause that car has “hips”.

don’t know about a civic, but i’ve done 3-across in a 2002 corolla as well as another compact i can’t recall.

the secret to 3 carseats in a tiny car is to scrap the expensive seats that have a small footprint – you need mis-matched seats that will “stack” – where one seat is more flush to the car and another is raised on a base so that it’s “wings’ overlap the smaller seat’s arms.

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